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Australian Stage Online<br>
Monday 14th January<br>
Written by James Waites<br>
<br>
Wantinyalana! Once in a Life Time! <br>
<br>
A few days back on a <a
href="http://www.australianstage.com.au/blogs/show,Art-Can-Save-Our-Souls.html/">Festival
blog</a>
entry I waxed lyrical over the rich treasure of the Kev Carmody tribute
concert. There I mentioned how some of us were ready to cast aside our
White Supremicist arrogance, sit down at the feet of Aboriginal Elders
and listen to whatever it was they saw fit to tell us.<br>
<br>
How could I know that the Carmody concert was but a warm up for <strong>Big
hArt’s</strong> enthralling drama - <em><strong>Ngapartji Ngapartji</strong></em>
- about the life of the Central Desert’s Spinifex people and, in
particular, the joys and sufferings of lead storyteller, <strong>Trevor
Jamieson</strong>
and his immediate family. Do the gods really ever listen? Maybe totems
do. For here I was, a few days later, not just in the presence of a
truly major work of art - brimming with ideas and emotions, and
exquisitely realized - but in the form of the very ‘sit down and
listen’ I had asked for.<br>
<br>
In a style that bounces joy and sometimes even reckless laughter off
the cold walls or wisdom, grief and sadness (found also in the film <em>Ten
Canoes</em>
to those who saw it), I was among the second-night Festival audience
who, first up, learned how to sing the kindergarten song ‘Heads
Shoulders Knees and Toes’ in Pitjanjatjara: ‘Kata alpiri muti tjina’. A
great ice-breaker. All of us being little kids again. The child in us
brought to the surface, we were sat down again and so the lesson began.<br>
<br>
Much recent Aboriginal expression deploying western theatre forms has
been reminiscent of grief counselling: where the victim initially
unleashes the horror of the experiences that is holding their healing
back. The story has almost always been personal and, however compelling
and sometimes hilarious, we whitefellas cannot help but come away
‘shamed’. I’m thinking of works including the plays of Jack Davis about
the 200-year-old ‘White Problem’ in West Australia to the solo shows of
Ningali Lawson and Leah Purcell, <em>Seven Stages of Grieving</em>,
and many more.<br>
<br>
<strong>Ngapartji’s</strong> writer and director, <strong>Scott Rankin</strong>,
worked with Purcell on her excellent one-person show, <em>Box the Pony</em>,
which premiered at the Festival of Dreaming in Sydney in 1997. A decade
later he is one among a vast tribe of artists, volunteers, language
teachers, activists, web specialists, and others, known as <strong>Big
hArt</strong>
– who have brought the elusive dream of ‘community art’ practice to a
level artistic sophistication that rivals Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.<br>
<br>
<strong>Big hArt’s <em>Ngapartji Ngapartji</em></strong> project
centres on the concern for lost language, the glue that holds any
culture together. Australia has already lost half of its 300 indigenous
languages; and 110 of the 145 surviving are on the critically
endangered list. <br>
<br>
You could say the current production at Belvoir Street (where, for a
Sydney season, this show belongs) is the above-surface component of the
<strong>Big hArt Ngapartji Ngapartji</strong>
iceberg; the bulk of the cultural activity taking place beneath this
surface. Perhaps it’s better to imagine Uluru as the tip of a mountain
rising bluntly out of its shimmering Central Desert surrounds, with the
bulk of its meaning, history and purpose lying beneath the surrounding
red-earth surface.<br>
<br>
Nearby Alice Springs serves as the centre for <strong>Big hArt</strong>.
As the program notes, this location on Arrente country is along way
from the Jamieson family’s Spinifex nation to the south west. But much
of this land is uninhabitable, even unapproachable, due to the poison
that lies in the soil since atom-bomb testing which took place, most
infamously at Maralinga. <br>
<br>
But <strong>Big hArt</strong> has worked on projects across the
length and breadth of Australia, including sites in Tasmania, the
troubled Sydney beach community of Cronulla; and even Northcott – the
daunting Housing Commission estate that raps its loving and sometimes
troubled arms around the Belvoir Street Theatre.<br>
<br>
In development is <em>Gold</em> a Murray-Darling basin project
which is looking at the effect of water (or lack of it) on communities
from the Queensland border and along the course of the river system
down into South Australia. It is <strong>Big hArt’s</strong> first
foray into the matter of global warming. And in typical fashion it is
coordinating opportunities for those effected to share their stories,
and by whatever means appear appropriate, art-making will emerge.<br>
<br>
In yet another most fortuitous merging of opportunities, Big hArt’s
National Creative Director and Cofounder, <strong>Scott Rankin</strong>,
was invited to give the 2008 Rex Cramphorn Lecture, included for the
first time in a Sydney Festival program and delivered yesterday. <strong>Rankin</strong>
offered an extraordinarily insightful commentary – again, like all <strong>Big
hArt’s</strong>
work I’ve now seen, swinging artlessly from sombre fact-telling to
self-deprecating joke-telling, taking in both big-picture vision and
microscopic and respectful observance.<br>
<br>
<strong><em>Ngapartji Ngapartji</em></strong> is the perfect example.
The production’s central performer, <strong>Trevor Jamieson</strong>,
explains that he began on this project because he wanted to make a film
about one of his brothers, <strong>Jangala</strong>,
who - like so many dispossessed - was having trouble holding his life
together. There is some stunning footage of this film where family,
including <strong>Jangala’s</strong> own children, gather round after
his release from jail to discuss, quite animatedly, where he might go
from here.<br>
<br>
This story of one young man’s troubles is used to personalize the big
version of the Spinifex people who were driven from their land after
the Australia agreed to Britain’s request to use nearby country to test
atom bombs. We are all aware, to varying degrees, the impact this had
on those who were poisoned. While physical illness in terms of cancer
is widespread, so was the dispersion of community and consequently
language. To quote Cape York elder, Roger Hart, “When I speak language,
it makes me feel home”. And Rita Mae Brown: “Language is the roadmap to
culture. It tells you where people are coming from and where they are
going.” So this is the story of profound loss.<br>
<br>
And it helps explain why, if you dip into the <strong>Big hArt</strong>
website, you can find out how to enroll in Pitjanjatjara, the language
of the Spinifex people. This company is not just out to point the
finger of blame, it is rolling up its sleeves and getting into the
business of helping with the healing. On the matter of radiation
poisoning, the cast includes Japanese-born <strong>Yumi Umiumare</strong>,
who contributes her own people’s version of this catastrophe; and we
are reminded too that Australian scientists stole the bones of hundreds
of infants for years, both black and white, to test for the effect of
pre-natal radiation poisoning. So white people have also been abused.<br>
<br>
Drawing on the malleable language of western theatre practice, this
production takes the previous work (above mentioned) of Davis, Lawson
and Purcell, et al, a step further. Here we go beyond identifying the
crisis and releasing some of the pain, to a new phase of learning and
healing - the beginning of. That we start with rehearsing the most
simple kindergarten song is fun, but no joke. Most of us really do have
to go right ‘back to the very beginning’ to make our start. In a stark
reminder touched on during the production: we all know how to go to
France and say ‘bonjour’ to the locals. But how many of us can do the
same in even one of Australia’s 150 surviving traditional tongues? As <strong>Rankin</strong>
reworked this alarming fact into his lecture: John Howard sent in the
army to help but, after jumping off the trucks, not a single soldier
knew how to say ‘hi’ in the vernacular of the people they had
supposedly turned up to help.<br>
<br>
By familiar western theatre standards, <em><strong>Ngapartji Ngapartji</strong></em>
is a profound and moving drama, exquisitely told. <strong>Trevor
Jamieson</strong>
carries the weight of the production with such a gift for movement and
story-telling that you imagine he is carrying around a feather. He
share’s the stage with a fine supporting cast including artists and
artisans, Australians of other blood-lines, and half-a-dozen women
elders. Their presence proffers, in equal share again, both laughter
and gravitas. <br>
<br>
Already eight years in the making, <em><strong>Njapartji Ngapartji</strong></em>
is, at its core, the unfolding of one family’s story. Without giving
too much away, now is an amazing time to catch where this family story
is at. Let me just say this: I called my response to the Kev Carmody
concert: ‘Art Can Save Lives’. <em><strong>Ngapartji Ngapartji</strong></em>
is living proof. <br>
<br>
To hear the David Byrne/Talking Heads anthem, ‘Once in a Lifetime’ wash
over you in Pitjanjatjara is a once-in-a-life-time experience. So is
this show: the bold little foal I mentioned last week is now bolting
around the paddock. Go take a look. Such beauty can make you weep!<br>
<br>
Further Reading <a href="http://www.bighart.org/" target="_blank">www.bighart.org</a>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Company B, Sydney Festival and Big hART in association with Melbourne
International Arts Festival, Perth International Arts Festival and
Sydney Opera House present<br>
<strong>Ngapartji Ngapartji</strong><br>
<br>
<strong>Venue:</strong> Belvoir St Theatre, 25 Belvoir St, Surry Hills<br>
<strong>Dates:</strong> 12 January – 10 February 2008<br>
<strong>Times:</strong> Tuesday 6.30pm, Wednesday to Saturday 8pm,
Sunday 5pm<br>
<strong>Duration:</strong> 2hrs, 20mins, including interval<br>
<strong>Tickets:</strong> Full $54 <br>
Seniors (excluding Fri/Sat evenings) & Groups 10+ $45. <br>
Concession $33. <br>
Student Rush $25 for Tuesday 6.30pm, available from 10am on the day
(subject to availability)<br>
<strong>Bookings:</strong> Belvoir St Theatre on (02) 9699 3444 or <a
href="http://www.belvoir.com.au/" target="_blank">www.belvoir.com.au</a>
| <a href="http://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/" target="_blank">www.sydneyfestival.org.au</a><br>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Alex Kelly<br>
Creative Producer<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ngapartji.org">http://www.ngapartji.org</a>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.bighart.org">http://www.bighart.org</a>
<br>
0422 777 590
<br>
<img alt="NGAPARTJI NGAPARTJI"
src="cid:part1.05030705.02010501@ngapartji.org" height="95" width="142">
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